The International Position of Japan as a Great Power (Volume 24, Nos. 1-3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II International Society Of Ancient Asia, 660 B. c.? 930 A. D. The Early Intercourse of Japan with the Korean Kingdoms and China.?In primitive times there was no international society or association of the different races as such. In the Orient as well as in the Occident the society of nations is the product of historic development. The original society of human beings was the family, or horde, from which an international society was ultimately developed through tribe, folk and national state.1 Passing over the development of Asiatic nations from the ethnological or sociological viewpoint, we find that the historians of China maintain that Chinese national life began with Foil Hi, their first great emperor, who established his dynasty in 2953 B. c.2 The Korean mythology holds that the existence of that nation dates from the time when Tan-gun, or Wang- gun, was, in the latter part of the reign of the Emperor Yao of China (b. c. 2357-2255), crowned by his father, Whan-ung, said to be a son of God (Whan-in).J The Chinese and Koreans claim, like the Jews and the ancient Egyptians, to be able to trace their national existence back to a period centuries before Solomon erected his Temple at Jerusalem. Without entering into the myths and legends of Japan, it may be said that her national history commencedwhen the Emperor Jinmu, the first Mikado, after the subjugation of the tribes on the mainland, established a capital at Kashiwabara in Yamato, 660 B. c.1 1 Giddings, Principles of Sociology, pp. 157-169. 2 Mailla, Histoire gtnerale de la Chine, vol. i, p. 5. 8 Korean Review, History of Korea, vol. for 1901, pp. 33 et seq. 40 [272 Intercourse among these Asiatic nations must have existed from an immemorial time, for China and Korea are situated in the same cont...